


Tell Her & Just Tell Her

by equilateral_asshat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Archived From My Tumblr, F/M, Two Parter, just a whole mess of angst, no sexy times, pinecest - Freeform, pinescest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 20:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16981632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equilateral_asshat/pseuds/equilateral_asshat
Summary: [Recommended Listening for Just Tell Her]Fall to Pieces by Avril LavineShooting Star by Elton JohnAmsterdam by Imagine DragonsHoney and the Bee by Owl CityGlitter in the Air by PinkI’m Yours by Jason MrazHeroes by David BowieI’ll be Your Man by James BluntWait by Get Set GoNot just A Girl by She Wants Revenge*Oh Darling by Plug in Stereo**-These two songs are featured at the very end of the fic and best listened to there





	1. Tell Her

_Tell Her._

Dipper shunted the thought to the back of his mind, focussing on the stretch of highway out in front of the vehicle. His grip tightened on the steering wheel, the creak of vinyl against skin barely audible above the old car’s stereo system, currently blaring European pop music from decades past. His twin sister sat in the seat next to him, bouncing her head gently in time with the music as she stared out the window.

He watched that spectacle for just a second too long, appreciating the way the long, bouncy chocolate colored hair swept this way and that against her shoulders. The way the corner of her mouth curled up in a sad smile as they drove past open expanses of moonlit field, occasionally broken by a copse of trees here or there, or a billboard, or overpass. When he could feel himself staring he snapped his focus back onto the road, despite the fact that they were practically alone on the highway. It was late at night, of course it was barren.

He sighed, mind replaying the weekend he and Mabel had just spent together. She’d landed early on Friday, visiting from college a couple of states away. They’d been accepted to separate schools, in separate states. They’d panicked, because they had never spent very long apart their entire lives. They nearly had emotional meltdowns when they had been put into two different bedrooms after they turned thirteen, how were they going to handle being so far apart?!

Mabel, luckily, had brought up using online programs to have video calls, and they would text or call each other whenever they had a chance those first few months. But eventually, school caught up with them and they’d started to slack in the communication department. It gradually hit the point where they only spoke once a week, just texting each other every other day or so. The video calls were slowly going the way of the dinosaurs. Or, at least, any dinosaurs not held in amber in abandoned mines in Oregon.

When his sister had enthusiastically called and informed him she’d won a radio contest for free plane tickets, and further informed him she’d used them to get tickets to come visit him, he’d jumped at the chance to see her in person again even if only for the weekend. He’d cleaned up his half of the apartment he’d gotten with a fellow classmate, that he admittedly could not remember the name of, maybe Ronald? Reginald? They barely saw each other, and given the odd smell of burning hair crossed with a skunk that permeated his roomie’s bedroom door, he had decided he was fine with that.

He had sat for an hour at the airport while he waited for her flight to land. Then another twenty minutes, anxiously bouncing in place while he held up a poster-board he had used glitter and glue on to spell her name out in comedicly large capital letters. It was sloppy, but it was colorful and sparkled so he knew she would love it. When he heard the shriek of delight and the pounding of feet, he’d barely had time to react when she tackled him.

He managed to sweep her up in a hug, pressing his head against her shoulder as they spun in place for a moment. She smelled like peaches, raspberries and vanilla ice cream. Her hair was softer than he’d remembered it being, and the sound of her laughter was like an angelic choir. He’d missed her so much.

_Tell Her._

“I missed you so much, bro-bro,” she’d mumbled into his ear, the arms around his midsection squeezing tighter. He tightened the hug as well, burying his face a little further into her hair.

“I missed you more,” he muttered, doing his best to not cry at the time. When they stepped apart, he looked her over; he hadn’t seen her in a few months and so much could change in that time. However, clearly all that changed with his twin sister was which temporary tattoo she wore at the time, and on which cheek. For now she had a rainbow on her left cheekbone, highlighted with glittery makeup that had no doubt already rubbed off on him somewhere.

They quickly began trying to catch up where their lives together had left off, discussing school, friends, all the little details. Mabel started counting off her new friends on her fingers, but Dipper didn’t hear a single name around the first time. He noticed how each fingernail was painted a different glittery shade. Her thumb was an emerald green, her index finger a sapphire blue, the middle finger a lovely royal purple…

He blunk his eyes a few times, trying to figure out why admiring his sister’s goofy makeup and nail polish habits were causing his heart to flutter the way it did. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind as they started to discuss where to go for lunch. With a tiny bit of coaxing, Mabel managed to strongarm him into taking her to an old fashioned ice cream parlor.

“This place is so cooool, why couldn’t I get into the same school as you?!” she moaned. Dipper grinned and shook his head as they sat in a booth, music from the late fifties droning out of a jukebox in the corner. A waitress in a poodle-skirt swung by, pad and pencil in hand. He’d barely registered her presence, instead watching Mabel, daydreaming, as she prattled on back and forth with the girl. When she’d walked off, Dipper only just realized Mabel had ordered for them.

“W-wait, what did you get me?! I was lost in my own mind again,” he lamented, his sister just giggling and shaking her head at him. He frowned, which she responded to with a bat of her long eyelashes, feigning innocence.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” she sang at him, hands clasped together against one cheek, as she blew an unassuming smooch his way. He felt heat rise in his cheeks and ears, and he immediately tugged his hat’s brim over his face. “Oh don’t get all shy on me now, Dipping Dot. I know you haven’t had to deal with me being affectionate in public in awhile but dang, hair trigger on the ole blush-o-meter!”

He crossed his arms over his chest with a huff, turning to pout at the wall. In the peripheral of his vision, he could see her inching in, leaning over until he couldn’t avoid her gaze any longer. When he glanced over, he noticed she was making a barrage of silly faces his way. Sticking her tongue out, rolling her eyes back into her skull as she chewed at her upper lip, then crossing them to make a fishy face at him. When she inflated her cheeks and poked her tongue out of her lips, blowing a slow but exaggerated raspberry, he finally cracked, laughing at her antics.

“Okay, okay! Stop it Mabes, sheesh,” he relented, fixing his hat and swiveling to face her. She beamed a grin his way, and then opened her mouth to say something. Before she could get a single syllable out, the waitress plopped a large glass down in front of them, a rainbow of colors sitting on top of brown fizzy soda squarely between them.

“And here is a concoction I never would have thought I would have an order for while working here,” she stated, pulling two straws and a pair of long, plastic spoons wrapped in plastic from her apron and setting them on the table. “One orange sherbet, strawberry syrup and rootbeer float with whipped cream and gummy bears.”

While Dipper stared at the monstrous mixture of sugar laid out before himself and his sister with apprehension and more fear than he cared to admit, Mabel’s eyes sparkled with wonder. She unwrapped one of the spoons, holding it before herself as though she had pulled Excalibur itself from the rock. The look of triumph and determination on her face managed to make Dipper snort with laughter again.

“What ungodly mixture of sugar and corn syrup have you brought down against my digestive system, Mabel? We aren’t all gifted with the pancreas of a god,” he teased, warily unwrapping his own spoon. When she took a bite, another thing finally clicked in his head. “Wait… you got one, to share? Mabel that’s what people do when they’re on dates!” He could feel himself getting red again.

“So? Nobody knows who I am here,” she said matter of factly. He maintained his grumpy pout. “Hey, c'mon bro-bro. Either you share it with me or I eat the whole thing myself. And look at how much sugar there is here! I won’t have to sleep all weekend lo-”

Before she had a chance to finish that last word, Dipper had unwrapped his spoon and plunged it into the strange mixture, and raising it to his lips as the sugary load threatened to dribble onto the table. After a moment of hesitation, he popped it into his mouth and rolled it about testingly on his tongue. Mabel was on her second bite, waggling her eyebrows at him, and before she had it swallowed she was scooping up bite number three.

“Alright, I admit defeat. This is suspiciously tasty,” he was forced to relent. She closed her eyes and smiled at him happily before shoveling bite number four (or was it five?) past her lips. When she finally swallowed, her chipmunk cheeks receding to normal size, she grimaced and shook her head. “What’s wrong?”

“C-cold! Can’t, can’t brain,” she managed to slur out between clenched teeth. He clamped a hand over his mouth, trying to hold back his laughter at her scrunched up expression. When she managed to open her eyes again, her pupils were huge, quickly narrowing to tiny dots as the light flooded against them. She had to blink a few times, eyes readjusting before she sighed with relief. “Eugh, brain freeze, that shizz is brutal.”

“Well then, maybe you’ll learn to slow down for once,” he quipped, popping another spoonful of the fizzy, fruity mixture into his mouth. She stuck her tongue out at him, but did in fact go slower for the remainder of the time they spent eating. Once they had finally defeated the sticky, syrupy demon of a dessert Mabel had ordered for them, they paid and left in good spirits, laughing at each other’s stories again.

Stepping outside, they realized just how long they had loitered in the soda shop, the sun setting fast behind the horizon. They hurriedly piled into Dipper’s beat up, secondhand station wagon and headed for his apartment. They were quiet, Dipper lost in thought, and Mabel presumably struggling to digest the monstrous amount of sugar and dairy she had just inhaled.

His brain raced, trying to figure out why her mere presence was so distracting today. He knew he’d missed her, she was his other half, they’d barely ever been apart. But every little thing was fogging up his brain today. The way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, the way she’d tilt her head when she listened to him talking. The way she’d painted her nails and fiddled with her hair, how good she had smelled whenever they hugged. The way he felt his heart soar when she spoke in that sing-song tone.

“Uh oh,” he murmurred, and her head whipped towards him. He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud, and he coughed to try and mask it.

“What was that, Dipper?” He shook his head at her question, trying to keep the car in the right lane during the brief spat of panic he felt.

“N-nothing, just thinking out loud I guess. Remembering stuff I almost forgot for school,” he lied quickly. He couldn’t admit the truth, she’d hate him, right? The sudden epiphany he’d had made him feel green around the gills. What would his sister say if he looked her in the eye and told her that he thought he’d fallen for her?

_Tell Her._

Arriving back at his place, they hustled her bags inside and up to his room where he had set out an old cot from his camping days. “I’ll, uh, I’ll take the cot, you can have the bed,” he suggested, kicking laundry around the floor to make a trail from door to bed, allowing her to avoid the minefield of unwashed garments that littered his space. She just nodded, following along in his wake until she made it to the bed, flopping back on the covers without any sort of ceremony or presentation. She rolled over, burying her face in his pillows and taking an audible sniff. Dipper felt the sweat beading on his forehead as he watched.

“Ugh, I know this is gonna sound weird but I missed the way you smell,” she muffledly spoke into the pillow. He laughed, shrugging to nobody in particular. When she looked up at him out of the corner of her eye, he looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “What’s with the whole ‘uh oh I’m an awkward dork’ routine there, Dipperoo?”

“Hm? O-oh, nothing. Just, I maybe felt the same? It’s weird.” The only response that garnered was a pillow soaring towards him and catching him in the face. He caught it before it could fall to the ground, staring at it. Then to his twin, who was kneeling on his bed, clutching the other pillow and grinning a defiant challenge at him. He mimed a look of betrayal, clutching a hand to his chest. “Attacked, by my own sister?!”

They instantly set upon one another, whapping with pillows and shrieking with laughter until neither of them could breathe. He collapsed, leaning against the bed while he sat on the floor, and she lay perpendicular across his bed, one hand rubbing through his messy brown locks.

“Okay, I think that killed the sugar rush,” she moaned out in disappointment, yawning shortly after. “I’m just gonna go change into my PJs and then collapse into bed, alright?” He just nodded as she rolled off of the bed and plodded off, a bundle of clothing tucked under her arm. The moment she was out of the room, he shucked his own garments, and hurried to redress in pajama pants and an old Monster-Mon shirt she’d given him a few years back. It was getting a bit snug, but he could squeeze into it, and he had a sentimental attachment to it.

He had just lay back down on the cot and started to pull his spare blanket over himself when his sister marched back in. She was wearing one of his old shirts he’d left at home, and a pair of old running shorts. He stared for a bit, and she perked a brow at him.

“Wuzzat look for, Dip?” He pointed at the shirt she had on.

“That… that’s mine. Why are you wearing my old shirt?” She blushed a smidgen (why did she blush?) and fiddled with the hem.

“It’s just, you left it at home and I really missed you so I, kinda, sorta, 'borrowed’ it?” Her voice raised in pitch with each word, nervously wavering. He eventually just shrugged and rolled over.

“Keep it, looks good on you,” he mumbled. He felt her lean over him, and seconds later he felt her lips press to his ear.

“Thanks, g'night bro-bro,” she yawned, and he listened to her climb into his bed, bury herself in the covers and get comfy.

_Tell Her._

“Goodnight, Mabes.”

———  
———

_Tell Her._

Dipper’s eyes cracked open roughly five minutes before his alarm would have woken him up. He promptly turned it off, sat up off of his cot and looked at his bed. Empty. Which meant his sister was somewhere else in the apartment. He stood up and waddled his way into the kitchen, nope. Empty. He felt the call of nature prod at him from inside and quickly shuffled to the bathroom. Locked. He knocked.

“Hmm? That you bro-bro?” He grunted in acknowledgement, and he heard his sister unlocking the door. She looked about as awake as he felt, hair disheveled, his old shirt hanging off of one of her shoulders. Soft, smooth, curvy shoul-NOPE. Nope, he wasn’t letting his brain do that. Not today.

She surrendered the restroom to him and he plodded in, closing the door and doing what he had to do. A minute or two later he’d washed his hands and shuffled back to his room to find his bed empty. A lazy smile crossed his face and he unceremoniously sprawled into his bed. It was so much better than that stiff old cot, ugh. A nap would be fine, right? He could steal another half an hour or so in the comfort of his mattress.

When he woke up again, he wasn’t the only sleeping body on the bed. Mabel had curled up next to him while he was out, apparently, and he was stuck between her and the wall his bed was shoved against. Almost pinned, she was so close. He could smell her shampoo, coconut and vanilla, and instantly his stomach fluttered, while his heart thumped against his ribs. He immediately rolled over to face the wall.

He tried to figure out where these feelings had come from, so suddenly. It wasn’t like he could have just fallen for his sister like that, in a scant few hours. But this didn’t feel like just a crush, either. This was the real deal. So how long had this been going on for? Right after they left for school? No, that didn’t feel like enough of a catalyst. Longer? Had he been burying these feelings since before they got out of high school? When had they started?! His mind raced, sweat pouring from his forehead. Then, just as fast as his brain had fired up, it shut down when he felt a shift behind himself, and an arm wrap around his upper torso.

“You are now the teddy bear of Lady Mabelton, wiggling is forbidden unless she chooses to allow it,” she mumbled into his shoulder. He chuckled, shoulders shifting as he did, which made her grip tighten. “Hey, what’d I jus’ say.”

“Very well, oh Miss Mabelthorpe, but we gotta get up eventually.” She shook her head into the back of his shoulders, and he sighed. “Mabes, I know we have all day to lounge around but-” he started, but his stomach finished the sentence for him, growling insistently. She started to giggle silently, but then her stomach followed suit and gurgled with hunger as well.

“Okay fine, the tummies win this round. But I demand snuggles later,” she stated flatly, releasing her hold on Dipper and half-rolling, half falling out of bed with a breathless “oof!”. He laughed even louder at that, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes as she collected her clothes for the day and sauntered out of the room.

As soon as she was clear of the doorway, he leapt from the bed and hustled to change from pajamas into day clothes. Luckily he had something clean, and he swiftly threw on an old pair of jeans that were going a bit ragged in the knees, followed by a gray shirt and over that, a green flannel shirt Wendy had given him their last summer in Gravity Falls. Tucking his old hat (which was starting to show as much age as his jeans) over his head, he walked into the living room to wiggle into his shoes.

Just as he got his shoes on and tied, Mabel emerged from the bathroom. She had selected a bright green sweater that was emblazoned with a shooting star crossing behind a blue pine tree on it. She had on a pair of khaki cargo shorts, and bright pink-and-black striped leggings. Her cascade of hair had been tied back into a poofy bun, and she had applied a stylized sun-and-moon temporary tattoo to her right cheek. She grinned at her brother, bouncing over to flop next to him on the couch.

“Heeeyyyy, our shirts match today!” she said, tugging at his sleeve. He rolled his eyes, then leaned forward and gave the front of her sweater a gentle nudge.

“This one’s new,” he noted, admiring the symbols on the front. Pine Tree and Shooting Star. A maniacal dream demon had once called them by those names, and they had adopted the monikers despite them coming from a being of pure evil, hellbent on killing them. She just nodded, and he swore her cheeks got pinker.

“I made it a few weeks ago when I was missing you super duper hard. Kinda to remind myself that even if there’s distance we’re still gonna always be us, the Mystery Twins, right?” He frowned at the creeping sadness in her voice, sitting up to pull her into a hug. He could smell that she’d used some sort of fruity body wash that blended perfectly with the scent of her shampoo and his heart bounced around inside his torso like a pinball. Swallowing hard to suppress the emotions, he sighed and planted a small kiss on her temple.

“We’ll always be the Mystery Twins,” he muttered into her hair. The somber moment was shattered when his stomach gave another loud, protesting growl of hunger, making them both break down into goofy laughter. “And today’s mystery is, what do we want for breakfast?”

“PANCAKES!” she declared, the volume of her voice making him wince even though he couldn’t help but chuckle at her enthusiasm. He stood up, extending a hand and helping his sister to her feet.

“Pancakes it is, then.”

The drive to the nearest diner was quiet, both siblings still waking up. And Dipper, once again, struggling to focus on these suddenly realized feelings for his sister. When they pulled into the parking lot she ooh’d at the old timey feel the diner had. The outside was almost entirely done in chrome, and what wasn’t shiny and reflective was a deep red. She skipped up to the door ahead of her brother, but waited patiently inside, rocking on her heels. The hostess approached when Dipper walked up next to Mabel.

“Howdy folks, just the two of ya?” she asked, her voice carrying more of a drawl than Dipper would expect from the area. Mabel nodded enthusiastically. “Alright, let’s just find you two cute things a booth. Y'all make an adorable couple.”

Dipper rapidly opened his mouth to protest, feeling red creep over his face like a wildfire through a dry field. Mabel snorted a bit, quickly looping her arm around his without looking. “Why thankya, ma'am!” she replied, gently elbowing him in the side. He grunted, and when he looked over to try and argue with Mabel about what she’d said, he noticed she was redder than usual, too. Why was she blushing? Why had she just stated that they might, in fact, be a couple?!

_Tell Her._

Dipper bit his tongue, trying to quiet that nagging voice in the back of his head as the hostess led them to their seats. He couldn’t admit to his sister how fucked up he’d gotten in the head. It would only push her away, and he felt like the growing rift between them, caused by school and distance, was already too wide. No, he just had to either wait for this affection to go away, to die down like every other time he’d had feelings for a girl.

Hey, maybe that was part of it. Most girls never looked twice at him, but his sister had always been there. Always built him up, told him how great he was and how he could do anything. So he just had to remind himself that it wasn’t out of any sort of returned affection for him. It was because they were best friends, brother and sister. That was all.

Before he could dwell on it for too long, their server came by to take their orders. Dipper got a rather basic order; two pancakes, some bacon, and an egg with toast. And some strong, black coffee to drink. His sister, ever true to her own sweet tooth, ordered a stack of strawberry-banana pancakes with blueberry syrup, and a glass of chocolate milk. When the server left to place the order with the kitchen, Mabel gave Dipper a not-so-gentle tap with the toe of her shoe, right to the knee.

“Ouch, hey! What was that for?” He frowned at her, and noticed she was pouting at him. “What did I do?”

“Nothing at all, and that’s the problem. I recognize the 'I’m stuck in my own head and don’t wanna burden my sister with my problems’ face you keep making. What’s up?”

_TELL HER._

He blunk at the volume of the voice in his head this time, mentally forcing it to quiet down, quelling the words that threatened to rise out of his throat and past his lips. “It’s just, uh, school and all has been keeping us pretty busy so I keep worrying what it’ll feel like when you head back out tomorrow.”

It wasn’t a lie, that thought HAD indeed crossed his mind. Before she’d even landed he was worried about how much he’d miss her. And now, he decided, it could serve as a convenient excuse, dodging the real issue. She didn’t need her visit ruined by his stupid emotions.

Going by the look on her face, she believed him, her eyes dropping to the plastic tabletop. Was she… guilty? “I’m sorry I’ve been kinda butt at keeping in touch, broseph. Just, like you said, school’s got us both pretty busy. It’s made it hard to make time for us…”

The server sauntered by, placing drinks on the table at that moment, which each twin quickly grasped and took a drink from, hoping that it would defuse the situation. They sat in solemn silence, until eventually Mabel extended a hand and clasped it over one of his.

“Sorry if I killed the mood, bro-bro. Just… I want this trip to be special, yanno? And seeing you get all nervous and stuff jank’s my head up too.” Instinctively, Dipper turned his hand over and gave hers a squeeze by way of apology. He met her gaze and smiled a sad smile, which she returned. She opened up her mouth to say something, just as a plate of pancakes slid in front of each of them. “OHMIGAWD PANCAKES. The lifegiver,” she said, bowing to the stack of strawberry-dotted confections before smothering them in blue syrup.

They both ate in silence, but this time it was less of a quiet sadness and more of a starving-to-death, eat-now-talk-later kind of silence. Mabel hummed around each bite, meaning she was enjoying her choice a lot. Dipper was satisfied with his as well, chewing thoughtfully at each bite. He needed to worry less about how he was feeling at the moment, and focus on how she felt. This trip was all about her.

After they’d both polished off their meals, Dipper paid (he’d insisted, for causing the discomfort before breakfast came), and they walked back out to the car. “So, we had a late breakfast, what would you like to do now, oh Lady Mabelton? Go mallratting, catch a movie…?”

“Yes.” The monosyllabic response caught him off guard.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, both. Mall first, then movie. I mean, that Ducktective film is in theaters now, why shouldn’t we go see that?!” He laughed a bit at her enthusiasm.

“I thought we agreed when we saw previews last year, that movie looks horrendous,” he replied, and she nodded with a bright smile.

“Well yeah, we’ll sit there and make fun of it as best we can! Worst case scenario the movie is better than we thought and we don’t get to riff on it as much.” He mulled that over, then agreed that yes, it sounded like fun either way. He was glad to have his sister and her way of thinking back in his life, if only for a remaining, fleeting 24 hours. An entire day to spend with the girl he’d recently realized he loved.

_Tell Her._

The mall was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday, which made spending time in shops easier, as they were far less crowded. Dipper could never stand big crowds. They poked fun at the shirts in Edgy on Purpose, killed an hour or two wandering through kitschy little folk art stores, and tried to see who could eat the most free samples in the food court before getting caught (Mabel, of course, won that contest). When they finally ran out of things to do at the mall, they absconded to the movie theater.

Two tickets, a bucket of popcorn and two drinks later, they were seated in front of the screen, watching as new previews rolled by. Including one for _“We Made Yet Another Help My Mummy’s a Werewolf!”_ That was the title, literally. Dipper couldn’t believe they were making another one of those horrible things, where did they keep getting the money for them?

Both of the twins hated to admit, but the Ducktective movie wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t fantastic, but it was definitely okay. They had fun mocking several plotholes or lines of dialogue, but it was, overall, still enjoyable to watch. They left the theater laughing, Mabel hugging against him while they walked out into the cool dusk air.

“Thank you, Dipper,” she stated out of nowhere. He tilted his head like a confused puppy.

“For what?” His inquiry made her glance up to meet his eyes, a shy smile crossing her features.

“Yanno, breakfast, the movie, not being angry after I almost totally killed the good vibes before our food arrived this morning, all that jank,” she explained, squeezing around him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave a half-hug squeeze of his own, rubbing her shoulder with his hand reassuringly.

“Nothing to apologize for Mabes. You were right to call me out on being lost in my own head,” he said with a shrug. He couldn’t tell her the truth of why he was actually lost in his own thoughts, though, could he? He could smell her when she was this close, and his senses being overwhelmed by her presence almost caused him to spill the truth then and there. He managed to bite it back, though, as they stood apart at the car while he unlocked and opened her door.

“Oh, such a gentleman! Do you treat all the ladies you take to see movies this way, Sir Dippingsauce?” she teased, giving an eyebrow waggle. He blushed a bit and rubbed at the back of his neck, gaze cast downwards.

“I, well, I’ve never actually-” he stammered, and she snorted back a laugh.

“Oh geeze, you still haven’t been on a date since high school? I’m sorry bro-bro,” she apologized, buckling herself in while he marched to his side of the vehicle and crawled into the driver seat. “I just figured you’d have ladies after ya by now. I mean, we’re twins and I’m positively adorable so clearly you’re good looking, too!”

He felt his ears burning, and hoped in the low light she couldn’t see his blush. She was calling him good looking now, and lamenting his lack of a girlfriend? This was twisting the proverbial knife now. “N-nope, or at least if any girl has looked my way I’ve been too preoccupied with schoolwork,” he mumbled, pulling out onto the road. At the very next light, one of their stomachs growled.

“Was that your tummy or mine, Dip?” Mabel asked, poking herself in the gut. He shrugged, honestly unsure.

“I don’t know, probably mine. You had twice as many samples as I did and popcorn isn’t that great of sustenance.” She snickered at his explanation, then pointed up ahead at a Yumberjacks restaurant.

“Well then let’s get some drive thru food and head on back to your place.” He couldn’t argue with that. They got their orders and ate on the way back to the apartment, both silently stuffing their faces with greasy fast food that was oh-so-good in that so-bad-for-you way.

Upon arrival, Mabel pretty much ran to the bedroom, leaving Dipper to chuck his shoes in the entryway before following. She was sitting on the bed, arms outstretched towards him, hands opening and closing. “What?”

“I told you earlier, I demand snuggly twin times. Now oblige me or suffer Mabel renditions of old boy band songs!” Dipper shuddered at the threat, gladly caving in to peer pressure as he flopped next to her on the bed. She immediately clung around his torso, face buried against his chest. A contented sigh escaped her lips, and he felt himself blushing at the way she nuzzled against him. “I really, really missed you, Dip.”

The sadness in her voice caught him off guard, and he had no idea how to respond. He simply brought a hand up to pet the top of her head gently. Those soft, chocolate curls flowed between his fingers like velvet. The warmth of her body against his was comforting, and coupled with his belly full of greasy food, he could feel himself drifting off already.

“I missed you too, sis,” he managed to mutter behind a yawn, burying his nose against the top of her head before planting a smooch there. The next thing he knew, he was out.

———  
———

Dipper woke up remembering only the faintest bits of his dream. There had been an overwhelming feeling of compassion and belonging, and the laughter of a girl that made his heart soar. She had been pulling him through a field of tall grass and flowers, giggling all the way. The more he struggled to remember, the more he felt details slipping away. He relaxed, and tried to let the memories come back naturally.

Long, flowing hair. The most infectious smile. Deep, honey-brown eyes, lips that glistened with pink gloss, rosy cheeks. His eyes snapped open as soon as he realized that the dream had been a romantic one, about Mabel.

_Tell Her._

He rolled over, and realized he was in bed alone. He rolled the other way and noticed the cot was empty too. His sister had vanished in the middle of the night, it seemed, but where to? That wasn’t like her. He wobbled his way out of bed and marched into the living room. He noticed the bathroom door was shut, so he gave it an inquisitive knock. He heard a voice grumble on the other side, and as he focused on waking up he heard the shower running.

“That you in there, sis?” A grunt of acknowledgement was the response, something about “glitter in my eyes” and he took that as a yes. He toddled his way back into his bedroom and rifled about for clean-ish clothes to wear. He then went and sat on the couch, drifting back to sleep as he waited for his sister to relinquish her hold on the shower. She emerged, and he looked up to say 'good morning’, then froze when he noticed she was in nothing but a towel.

It hugged her frame tight, while a second one wrapped about her head to keep her long hair out of the way. He gawked for a second, then managed to wrench his eyes away, forcing his bundle of clothes into his lap.

“Mmmmmmmornin’, bro-bro,” she sang, strolling to his room. As soon as she was out of sight he jogged to the restroom, locked the door, and turned on the coldest shower he could stand to take.

The chill of the water shocked him awake, and also calmed everything down that was happening below the belt. He couldn’t deal with that sort of thing on top of romantic notions. It was bad enough that he was falling for his sister, lusting after her was another thing. He knew for a fact that no matter how cold the shower now, he’d be haunted by the mental images of this event later tonight. He shook his head to try and clear it, to rid himself of those thoughts. After the chill of the water managed to help him clear his head, he toweled himself dry and dressed, pulling on a plain red shirt and a pair of black jeans.

Emerging from the shower, he could smell food cooking. Was that… bacon? And french toast? His head rounded the doorway of the kitchen to spy his sister, wearing a frilly, knee-length dress, hair pulled back into a ponytail, humming to herself as she fixed breakfast. He walked in and sat at the little table, quiet as could be. When Mabel turned around with a plate loaded up with food, she let out a small scream and almost dropped it on the floor.

“Whoa! Sneaky sneaky, bro-bro. This was supposed to be a surprise breakfast!” she chastised, and he shrugged with a chuckle. She set the plate down in front of him, and the smell wafting up made his stomach rumble, and his mouth filled with drool.

“Well it still kind of counts, because when I walked in and saw you cooking it shocked me. Didn’t even realize we had food in the fridge,” he mused, using his fork to collect a bite of the french toast. Mabel just laughed at the enthusiasm he started eating with.

“I might have actually got up like, two hours ago, walked to the mini-mart on the corner and grabbed stuff to cook with. I tried to get your roommate out of bed but he just turned up his reggae music and bubbled at me?” It was Dipper’s turn to snort, swallowing a bite of his food.

“Yeah, he and I have talked maybe four times since we moved in. Dunno what he does but he pays his half of the rent and doesn’t seem to be doing _too much_ that’s illegal,” he noted, popping another bite into his mouth. The french toast was perfect; crisp on the outside, custard-like texture inside with hints of maple, cinnamon and vanilla. The bacon was cooked to be done all the way through without shattering when he bit into it. His sister could cook, and better than she likely gave herself credit for. “Mabel, this is amazing. Aren’t you going to eat any?”

She shook her head. “Nah, like I said I’ve been up for a few hours, I had something to eat already.” Sitting opposite of him, she let a heavy sigh slip out as she crossed her arms on the tabletop and laid her head in them. This was followed by an unhappy groan. Dipper set his fork down and cleared his throat, reaching out to pet the top of her head.

“What’s wrong, sis?” She tilted her head up enough to look him in the eye, briefly, then quickly looked down at the laminate covering on the table. She sighed heavily again, shaking her head against her arms. “Mabel, what’s the matter?”

“I don’t wanna leave,” she mumbled, and it became apparent to him that she had hid her face so he wouldn’t see her crying. “I th-thought that maybe it w-wasn’t so bad, being apart, but seeing y-you in person after so long, I, I c-can’t-”

That was all she could manage before he could tell the waterworks were coming in full force, her shoulders heaving as she suppressed a sob. He stood up away from the table, then stepped around to pull her up into a hug. She buried her face against his shoulder, tears flowing as he rubbed her back, shushing in her ear to try and calm her down.

He felt his heart drop, standing there like that, embracing the most wonderful girl he’d ever known. The best friend he’d ever had. He didn’t realize he had started crying until a tear dropped onto her shoulder. He nuzzled the side of her head, whispering to her that it would be okay, school would go by faster than they realized. Soon they’d have winter break, they’d even see each other at home for Thanksgiving in a couple of months. She nodded quietly, and he felt her stop shaking. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to tilt her head up and plant his lips on her own.

_Tell Her._

“So, we have several hours before I have to take you to the airport, I think. What would you like to do?” he asked. She just shook her head, refusing to budge from that spot. “Wanna watch cartoon reruns on my laptop?” This time she nodded.

They spent the remaining time they had for the day curled up on his bed, watching old, corny cartoon shows on the internet, laughing at some times, humming theme songs other times, but overall silently enjoying each other’s company. An alarm he had set on his phone alerted them that they needed to leave for the airport, so without a word they both got up, him carrying her luggage to the car despite it being just a carry-on. Then, they were on the road.

———  
———

And that was that. The entire weekend leading up to the current point, with Dipper parking his car in the parking garage and walking with his twin sister into the airport, standing behind her as she checked in for her flight. The entire drive out had been silent save for the radio, and as they walked to line for security, he felt her close her hand around his own. He squeezed reassuringly. Once they’d reached the line, he could go no further, so they turned to face one another.

“Well, I guess this is as far as I go,” he said, unable to shake the sad tone in his voice. She just nodded. “Have a safe flight, okay? I’m gonna miss you a lot. Call me as soon as you land so I don’t panic,“ he requested.

She grabbed him in a tight hug, burying her face in his shoulder for the second time that day. "I miss you already, Dipper. I love you.”

_Tell Her._

“I love you too,” he muttered, trying to word it in a way that would both shut that little guilty voice up and comfort his sister. It seemed to work, and she stepped back, smiling at him with tears in the corners of her eyes. She tiptoed up and tilted his head down, planting a kiss on his birthmark.

“Drive home safe, okay?” she said, turning and pulling her roll-along luggage with her into the security-check line. With a deep breath and a determined gait, he marched back towards his car, mentally chastising himself every step of the way.

_Why didn’t you tell her you’re in love with her?!_

———  
———

Seated on the plane, a girl with the shiniest, silkiest brown hair stared out of the window. An entire, magical weekend had flown by. Sure, not everything she’d wanted to do while she hung out with her bro-bro happened, but it had been wonderful. As she watched the ground sink away, the plane taking off, she sighed and wiped a tear from her cheek, the forlorn smile giving way to a disappointed frown. She buried her face in her hands, silently cursing at herself for not doing the one thing she told herself she should have when she landed.

_Why didn’t you tell him you’re in love with him…_


	2. Just Tell Her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Recommended Listening for Just Tell Her]  
> Fall to Pieces by Avril Lavine  
> Shooting Star by Elton John  
> Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons  
> Honey and the Bee by Owl City  
> Glitter in the Air by Pink  
> I’m Yours by Jason Mraz  
> Heroes by David Bowie  
> I’ll be Your Man by James Blunt  
> Wait by Get Set Go  
> Not just A Girl by She Wants Revenge*  
> Oh Darling by Plug in Stereo*
> 
> *-These two songs are featured at the very end of the fic and best listened to there

Laying back in his bed, Dipper’s stomach groaned in protest. He rubbed a hand over his swollen midsection; Thanksgiving dinners were bound to be hell on the average person’s diet, and Dipper was no exception to this rule. Some time after dinner he had excused himself to go lay back and digest for a while, walking precariously to his old room.

Things had changed since he’d left for college; the walls were no longer covered in posters for terrible monster movies or the paranormal. His desk was missing, and not a speck of clothing, save what he’d brought back home with him for the visit, was anywhere to be seen. The room felt so empty, so alien to him, now. It was hard to believe that just a few months ago this had been his sanctuary, but now it was nothing but a clean, tidy guest room like any other. They had even re-papered the walls with a brighter, more neutral tone than the old, grayish-green paint that had once adorned the walls. He probably wouldn’t have felt like he was home at all, were it not for his twin sister also being there.

At the thought of his sister, he felt his heart wrench. Mabel was everything to him. Moreso now than ever, ever since her trip to visit him where he was attending school a few months ago. Over the course of the trip, he’d come to the horrifying revelation that he had fallen in love with his twin, and had hated himself for it. He still did. He was sick in the head, he’d decided, because ever since that fateful visit he had thought of little else. For a week or two, his focus and grades in classes had slipped, but he had managed to bring himself back up with some well placed ass-kissing to his professors, and some extra curricular assignments.

Still, it had become a chore trying to rid himself of his feelings. No person should ever be so deeply in love with their sibling. But the more he tried to fight his feelings, the more strongly they plagued him. His sister had always been the one rock in his life, it seemed. Mabel supported his crazy ideas, and she had  always played along with his adventures and monster hunts when they were younger. Hell, for an entire summer, instead of immediately brushing his finding the journal as some crazy conspiracy nutso jank, she had helped him try to uncover the secrets and mysteries of Gravity Falls. Fuck, they’d worked to save the world together! Possibly all of reality! It was hard to not fall in love with somebody you did something like that with.

A heavy sigh of self-resentment escaped him, and he pulled his earbuds and his phone out of his pocket. Pulling up a playlist, he started listening to the music as he went over the last three days in his head. Maybe if he could piece them together in a specific way, he could brush off a lot of what had happened as mere coincidence, and could pummel his surging, mixed emotions over his sister back down until it was time to go back to school. As the music started to play, he shut his eyes and let his mind wander.

———

———

The drive back home had been long, and had had a few odd snowy patches. It was colder this year than usual. He felt it might be foreboding, a bad omen, but Dipper had pressed on. When he pulled into his old driveway, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. He hadn’t been back since the few days before classes started. He stared at the brick facade that the house was sided with in the front, giving it an older, weathered look. He felt his lips curl into a small grin seeing the porch steps were still flaking in a few places, a new paintjob still desperately needed. He also noticed, with amusement, the old wreath his sister had made forever ago was hung on the door, made up to look like a giant, wicker, turkey-donut. He clambered out of his car, then retrieved his suitcase from the trunk and started for the front door. The steps creaked underfoot, as did the floorboards of the porch itself. Before he could wrap his fingers around the door handle, the door swung open, and he was smashed in an over-enthusiastic hug.

“Dipper ohmigawd I _missed_ yooouuu,” his sister squealed, lifting him off of his feet to give him a playful shake. She had always been stronger than she looked, and yet it still amazed him whenever she would hug him like this. He squirmed in her grasp, coughing a bit as air was forced from his lungs.

“Mabes… can’t… breathe!” he sputtered, and she reluctantly set him down. After he managed to get a good lungful of air, he grabbed her in a hug of his own. She giggled and squealed happily as he picked her up off of her feet. When he set her back down, he motioned at her with both hands. “I thought you were arriving tomorrow, I was going to come pick you up at the bus stop!”

“Yeah, _well_ … I may have fibbed a tiny bit on that front, broseph,” she admitted, winking as an ornery grin crept over her face. “After all, what fun is there in trying to surprise you if you know ALL the details?”

Dipper sighed and rolled his eyes. Typical Mabel, always trying to find ways to catch him off guard and make him smile. That was just one of the reasons he was falling for - nope, he wasn’t going to let himself dwell on that. Especially not around their parents. Apparently his expression mirrored his own irritation at himself, because Mabel’s smile melted away to a concerned frown. “Whoa, hey, I’m sorry, I thought you’d be happier to see me tonight instead of tomorrow.”

“Oh, god, I’m sorry Mabel. I am, I just… lots of stupid thoughts gunking up the works in here. It was a long drive. Are Mom and Dad not here?” he asked, trying to steer the subject elsewhere. His sister shook her head.

“Nah, Mom realized she needed some more stuff for dinner on Thursday. Her and Dad are out scouring the all grocery stores in a twenty mile radius to try and find all the ingredients she forgot to get the first trip around.” Dipper nodded, shooting her a smile as he stepped past her into the house. Yeah, his mom took holiday meals like this super seriously, but she also had a tendency to neglect one recipe or another when she set her mind on making sure another one of them was perfect. His father probably also had a few things he would want to grab, himself.

“How long have they been out?” Inwardly, Dipper was chastising himself for the forced small talk, but he felt like if things got too quiet he’d say-or even do-something regrettable. So forced small talk it would be. He knelt down and started to untie his shoes, eyes taking in the details of his sister’s outfit for the day.

A dark green sweater with a cornucopia patched to the front of it was draped over her body, various fruits of felted wool spilling out. The grapes were actually little pom-poms she’d sewn on, and they would jiggle about when she moved. Her knee-high socks were a dark brown color, with autumn-colored leaves taking up space as they got closer to her feet, and, unsurprisingly, they were toe socks, with each toe a different shade of red, orange or yellow. Her outfits were always a lot more cheerful than his own, so this level of festivity was unsurprising. He usually stuck to dressing comfortably-form over function-and as such was usually in a flannel shirt with a tee shirt under it, and ratty old jeans. Today was no different.

“Oh, a couple hours now. I was starting to worry I’d die of boredom, but then I heard you trompin’ around on the porch, and I’d know those clompy feet anywhere!” He rolled his eyes again, chuckling at her over-enthusiastic description of his arrival. “So, how was the drive?” He quirked a brow at her as he stood up straight; she was also forcing small talk. Why was she forcing small talk? Or was he overthinking everything again?

“Shockingly, I saw a few patches of snow on the way down,” he explained, continuing into other small details like some of the silly license plates he’d spotted, or the signs for kitschy roadside attractions. She jokingly asked if he saw any signs that boasted “new mummies daily”, and he shuddered at the thought.

“Can we not discuss that whole thing? I still feel horrible about it.”

“Because we almost got eaten by a spider lady?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, because I was a horrible jerk to all those girls. I never got over how awful I felt for lying to all of them,” he explained. She frowned and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

“You were twelve, Dip. Pretty sure we’re all allowed to make dating mistakes in those kinds of situations. Besides, I’m sure you’re much better at talking to girls now, eh? Eh?” she suggested, elbowing him in the ribs. He snorted with laughter, the spot ticklish, and batted her away.

“No, pretty sure I’ve gotten worse,” he lamented, and he saw her eyes sparkle. “Uh oh, what’s with that look?”

“There’s a girl now, isn’t there? Ohmigosh is she cute?! What’s her _name_?! Tell me _EVERYTHING_.” Her eyes were glowing with interest, her grin wide, and she was practically bouncing on her toes in anticipation already.

Dipper groaned. Was he that transparent? Hopefully he could deflect this. He was afraid if he said much of anything, she’d figure out who he really liked, and when she realized he liked _her_ , of all people, she’d hate him. He couldn’t stomach the thought.

“She… she wouldn’t even like it if she knew I was into her. I’d rather just let her live her life, and keep her friendship than ruin it by saying anything to her,” he lamented, tugging the bill of his hat down over his eyes. His sister just leaned down until she could look him in the face again. “Mabel, please, just this once, let it be?”

She frowned, but sighed and relented, waving her hands to show she was letting the subject go for now. This was followed by her embracing him in a softer hug than before. “I’m sorry, Dipper. I just want to see you happy. I know you’ve never been that good at figuring out girls, either,” she added, causing him to groan, “but I just want to help you. Your happiness is important to me.”

The tone of her voice was causing his insides to roil in an almost curious manner. She sounded horribly upset, mostly with herself. He knew that particular tone from all the times she had let herself get too hung up on a certain guy, or if she had allowed herself to prioritize one project over another for too long. He frowned with uncertainty, then gave her back a gentle pat to let her know, without a word, that everything was fine.

“Hey, isn’t _Ducktective Saves Thanksgiving_ on TV tonight?” he suggested. His sister gasped and leapt back.

“Oh man it _is_ , I almost forgot! You go get popcorn, I’ll find it on TV and get the couch ready go go go!” she said, shoving him towards the kitchen. He just laughed and went along with it, shuffling into the kitchen and rifling through the cupboards until he found what he sought. He leaned against the counter while the popcorn popped in the microwave, listening to his sister hum from the next room.

The mixture of sounds brought back memories of the two doing this when they were much younger, even all the way back to when they were little kids; he would gather up the snacks while his sister secured their choice of TV channel or movie to watch for the evening, then they would sit up, far past their allotted bedtime, watching shows until they would pass out, leaned against one another. The twinge of nostalgia he felt from that dug a little deeper than he’d care to admit.

Once the telltale popping of kernels slowed, he grabbed the now puffed up bag, and then a bowl from the shelf and poured the bag out into it, followed by a healthy dose of kettle-corn seasoning, and then a sprinkling of salt. Marching into the living room, he plopped himself on the couch near his sister, the bowl settling between them.

They sat in silence together, or as silent as they could be without making jokes about the show, or quoting Ducktective as he pointed out clues the Constable had missed. When it finally ended, Mabel sighed happily. “You know, what I don’t understand is why the deputy dresses up as a giant turkey in the first place, that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes even less sense that Ducktective would want to save an American holiday about eating birds,” Dipper pointed out in a flat, dry tone. Mabel gave him a gentle shove. “What?!”

“Holiday specials don’t have to make sense, Dipstick,” she teased, and he blew a short raspberry at her. “Or maybe he’s just racist and hates turkeys?!” she added with a horrified gasp. He raised an eyebrow at her, seeing she was gnawing at her knuckles with worry. He sighed, moved the now-empty bowl, and tugged her into a hug.

“Let’s just go with the first one, sis,” he reassured her. She practically melted into the hug against him, sighing with relief. She even seemed to nestle in closer. He could feel every curve under her sweater, especially with that next deep breath she took. Was… was she doing that on purpose? He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead already.

“Uh, Mabes?”

“Yeah, Dippingsauce?” She glanced up at him, the soft, innocent pout on her face threatening to make him blush. He was certain he had something to say. He was absolutely sure he did! What happened, where did his words go when he needed them most?

Fortunately, he was saved by the sound of the front door swinging open. “Dipper, Mabel! Help your father and I with the groceries!” Mabel sat up and stretched, which allowed him to finally breathe before he quickly stood up. He gave his mother a quick hug on the way out the door, sidling up to his father at the back of their SUV.

“Hey, Dad. How many things did Mom forget, exactly? All of them?” he said, motioning at the number of sacks filling the back of the vehicle. His father laughed, shaking his head.

“Sure seems that way, huh? Grab an armload and help me out here,” he replied. Dipper cracked his knuckles and gave his shoulders a flex. His father frowned. “Dipper, you know you can take more than one trip right?”

“That’s quitter talk, Dad. I have to do it all in one go, for our family’s honor!” His father rolled his eyes, but helped Dipper grab as many bags as he could carry and then some. Once he was loaded down, Dipper trudged his way into the house, and then into the kitchen where his mother and sister were putting away what had already come in on their mom’s trip. Mabel spotted Dipper and snorted with laughter, which caught their mother’s attention.

“And just what is so amusing, young la-oh good lord, Dipper, really? Still with this?” she lamented, but Mabel bowed to her brother.

“Our family’s honor is preserved,” she said in a serious tone. He bent at the waist to return the gesture before letting everything slip gently to the floor. Both of them burst into a fit of giggles, their mother rolling her eyes before clapping her hands together a few times to get the twins’ attention. They instantly both set about putting everything away.

“Ah, forgot how nice it was to have two more sets of hands helping with that nonsense. Thank you both. Also,” she noted, sweeping Dipper into a tight hug and planting smooches liberally on his face, “It’s so good to see you again, son! You and your sister got pretty quiet the last few weeks. School getting tougher?” He just nodded. “Good that you’re focused on it, then. You can set up in your old room while you’re staying here.” With that, she shooed both of the twins from the kitchen.

Dipper felt a yawn working its way out and succumbed to the desire, stretching as he exhaled noisily. “Ugh, sleep sounds amazing actually. G'night Mabes,” he said, grabbing his suitcase and heading for the stairs. As soon as he got to the foot of the staircase, his sister bounced over and planted a smooch on his cheek. “Uuuhhh…?”

She pointed up, to where, tied above the foot of the stairs, was a sprig of holly and mistletoe. He furrowed his brow at the decoration, then at his twin. She just smiled innocently. “Mabel, why did you hang that up this far away from Christmas?”

“Felt like it. But you can get your butt in bed now, Dipper. You’re gonna need your sleep for all the turkey prep and whatnot tomorrow,” she said, giving him a gentle nudge towards the stairs. He was too tired to think too hard on it as he made his way up the flight of carpeted stairs, then to his old room’s doorway. Once behind closed doors, he changed into his pajamas, then flopped into the new bed in his old room, and passed out.

———

———

Dipper arose to the smell of baking confections. It was a wonderful smell made of many other aromas mingling together; cloves, cinnamon, pumpkin, ginger, vanilla, and more. He rolled his way out of bed and sorted through his suitcase for a fresh change of clothing, then waddled his way off to the bathroom to shower and change. The smell of baked goods even permeated this far, leaving his stomach growling in angry protest at its emptiness while he scrubbed himself clean. “Quiet you, I’ll steal us a few cookies when I get down there,” he mumbled to his gut.

He crept down the stairs as carefully and quietly as possible, and snuck over to the kitchen’s entryway. His mother and sister were busying themselves by the mixing bowl for the moment, and he spied a few hand-shaped sugar cookies cooling on a rack. He tiptoed over, reaching out for the closest one. Without even looking away from what she was doing, his sister swiped out with a rubber spatula, swatting him on the hand. He yelped and leapt back a step, shaking his now-stinging hand.

“Oh! Good morning there, sleepyhead. You sister and I have been busy all morning, nice to see you join the land of the living,” his mother said without looking away from the recipe book. Mabel, however, turned and grinned at her brother before poking her tongue out and blowing a very brief “thppbbt” at him. He stuck his tongue right back out at her.

“Go find Dad, Dipstick. He’ll want your help getting the turkey ready for the brine,” his sister said, handing him an already decorated cookie; the hand shapes were transformed into turkeys with clever icing and sprinkle work. Given the little candy eye stuck on the thumb, along with a piece of candy corn for a beak, it was apparent that these were his sister’s doing. He ate away at the fingers as he marched his way towards the backyard to join their father, finding him standing over a five gallon bucket, measuring water out. Dipper quickly scarfed down the remaining hand-turkey chunk.

“Hey, looks like I didn’t sleep too long, almost missed my chance to learn the secret recipe again this year,” he quipped, at which his dad snorted.

“There’s no secret to it, I yanked it off the internet. Here, you cut the oranges and lemons while I get the rest of this going,” his father requested. Dipper sat down at their picnic table and started cutting into the citrus that had been selected. Three lemons, three oranges. He quartered each fruit in turn, then squeezed the juices out into the bucket, afterwards adding the squeezed chunks of citrus to the water while Mr. Pines measured out a cup and a half each of brown sugar and salt, then began stirring it together with a contraption fashioned together of a cordless drill and a large, heavy duty whisk that had been epoxied to the bit the drill held. Next went in a handful of fragrant cloves, some freshly crushed black peppercorns, some rosemary, a handful of bay leaves, plus a healthy pinch each of dried sage and dried thyme. His father wafted the aroma surfacing from the bucket to greet his nose and sighed happily. “Ah, smells like heaven.”

Dipper had to agree, the mixture always smelled wonderful. It was no wonder soaking a turkey in it made it delicious. Speaking of, the bird was next: 13 pounds of delicious, once-gobbling goodness about to soak for 24 hours. He watched as his father submerged the bird, neck-hole down, into the bucket of brine, then helped him hammer the lid tightly in place with rubber mallets. His dad then hauled it into the basement, to sit quietly in the cool, dark corner of the utility room there.

Dipper, meanwhile, returned to the kitchen, only to find the cookies had vanished. Most likely hidden somewhere to prevent him from gorging on them. He might not have had his sister’s sweet tooth, but he could eat the hell out of homemade cookies. His mother and sister were on to the dishes now, and he sidled up next to his sister, grabbing a towel to dry as he and his mother washed.

“Get the bird in his bathwater?” His mother asked. He hummed and nodded in reply, toweling at the dishes absentmindedly. His mind was off in the past again, remembering how he and Mabel would stand at the sink on stepstools, years ago, helping with the dishes. Or, rather, they were supposed to be helping, but would inevitably end up having bubble fights that got them scolded, more for getting bubbles everywhere but the sink than playing around when they were meant to be doing chores. It would seem that his sister had the same memories lingering in her own mind, because as he set a glass down on the counter, he found a handful of suds being blown to smack him lightly on the cheek.

“You realize that this means war later, correct?” he muttered under his breath, casting a sidelong glance her way. She waggled her eyebrows at him in challenge. Narrowing his eyes at his sister, he wiped the suds off of his own face with a few fingers, and then gently placed them on the top of her head.

“Don’t you start that, you two! I swear, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were both still ten years old,” their mother softly chastised. The twins just giggled amongst themselves, playfully elbowing at one another. “I’d also think you were both flirting with each other, if you weren’t related.”

Dipper almost dropped the glass he was drying off when he heard that. He felt color drain from his face, and he cast a worried look at his mother and sister each. Mabel, however, just rolled her eyes.

“Oh puh- _lease_ , Mama. Dipper wouldn’t know how to flirt if he read a book detailing the methods,” she teased, elbowing at him again. He grunted, stumbling a bit. When his sister looked up to see if she’d offended or hurt him, he busied himself by making absolutely certain that the tines of the fork he was holding were very, very dry. Dryer than his mouth felt. He found himself very thankful when their mother sighed with satisfaction.

“There we go, that’s all of the dishes,” she noted, peeling out of her gloves with the sound of rubber snapping back into shape. “That’s all I needed help with today, though, so you two can go busy yourselves however. Just stay out of trouble.” Mabel quickly thanked her, planting a kiss on her cheek, before snapping Dipper on the backside with her wrung out washcloth and bolting from the room. He hurried to finish drying what he had left, then stalked after her.

She wasn’t anywhere in the living room, and since he hadn’t heard the door to the basement slam shut when she took off, he could only presume his quarry had fled up the stairs. He ascended as quietly as he could, peeking just over the edge of the top riser to be sure she wasn’t waiting to spring a surprise attack on him; the coast was clear.

He ducked over into his old bedroom and grabbed his suitcase, rifling through the contents. The sound of plastic clicking against plastic caused him to freeze in place. “What’s the matter, Dipstick? Think you’re the only one who brought their old Nyarf gun with them?”

“If you have yours, then where is mine?” he grumbled, twisting to glance over his shoulder. She was gripping his gun, cocked and loaded, pointed at the back of his head. Meanwhile she spun her own, spray painted a glittery pink and smothered in scratch-and-sniff stickers, on the trigger finger of her free hand. “Also, I want to add, that is horrendous trigger discipline.”

“DIE!” was her only response, but previous years of outrunning monsters and supernatural entities had instilled fast reflexes in him. He rolled to the side, whipping a dirty sock from his luggage at her just as she pulled the trigger. She instinctively recoiled, arms shielding her face as the sock flew towards her, in turn causing her to drop his dart gun.

He dove for the toy and the fired foam dart, reloading and cocking it before pointing at his twin. Mabel had fully recovered, priming her own gun and aiming at him in near-perfect synchronization. They each held this pose for a silent thirty seconds, each with their eyes narrowed at the other. Dipper gave his lips a tentative lick. Mabel gulped noisily.

“You don’t have the stones,” Dipper said in his best Grandpa the Kid voice.

 _ **THWOK! THWOK!**_ The shots rang out in tandem, and a split second later each twin had a Nyarf dart sticking to their forehead. Mabel went cross-eyed to stare at the foam cylinder secured on her noggin while Dipper reached up to poke at the one sticking to his birthmark. Before either of them said another word, they collapsed, melodramatically, Mabel making a drawn out “bleeehhhh” sound, Dipper sticking his tongue out of his mouth.

As each waited for the other to relent from their pretend-death first, footsteps started up the stairs and the mustachioed face of their father poked into the room. “Hey Dipper, have you seen the-oh, never mind, you’re dead. Mabel sweetie, have y-oh, oops.” Without even cracking a smile he turned to shout back down the stairs, “Honey! The kids killed each other again!”

“We can still make more!” she shouted back. The running gag of their family made Dipper chuckle, while Mabel sat up, working crocodile tears into her eyes.

“Y-you… can’t… make… another… M-Mabel!” she retorted, pretending to sob between every word. Their father leaned further into the room to pat her on top of the head.

“Of course not, dear. Next time we’ll make a better Mabel. She’ll be as smart as your brother and as pretty as you. The brother will have to be a big ugly dumb dumb.”

“Hey! I resent that remark,” Dipper groused. “I’m not ugly and Mabel’s not stupid.”

“Ah shoot, you’re both still alive?” He turned to face down the stairs again. “False alarm, honey!”

“Good! I’m not going through nine months of swollen ankles and disgusting food cravings to have two more dorks fall out of me,” their mother called back, reducing all of them in the room to giggles. Their father straightened his back some as he returned to serious mode.

“Now then, Dipper, did you see where I put the drill earlier?”

“Nope,” he replied, and their patriarch just shrugged it away.

“Ah well. I’ll check the shed again, your mom wanted me to help her core apples. You two be sure to keep the fratricide to a minimum, or at least the bloodshed minimal. We just redecorated in here,” he specified as he turned to continue his search for the drill.

“Yes, Papa!” Mabel cheerfully replied. She turned and beamed a smile in her brother’s direction, then tilted her head like a curious puppy. “What’s that smile for, Dip-Dop?”

He felt heat rise under his cheeks; oh no, had he been staring again? Ugh, all this nostalgia for their youth was making these taboo feelings for her even worse. Wait, why was the nostalgia making them worse?! How far did these go back?! Oh no, she was staring back with a frown now. _Say something, you idiot._

“Just, uh, feels nice for us all to be under the same roof for a couple days. When he isn’t making terrible Dad Jokes, Dad can be pretty funny.” His sister just nodded.

“I always found it odd how willing Mom was to go along with that joke,” she said, plucking the dart from her forehead. Dipper mirrored the action, wincing as the suction cup plucked at his skin, finally yielding. He shrugged at her statement.

“She has to have a sense of humor to put up with the rest of his jokes, right?” His sister nodded, sprawling out on the carpeted floor. Her hair encircled her head, framing her visage in an almost angelic way. He opened his mouth to talk, mentally screaming at himself to shut up the entire time his lips were moving. “I also really, really missed you. Even more than the day you flew back up to your school.”

“Aaawww, Dipper,” she answered with a pout. “I missed you too, though. I feel like there’s a part of me missing when I’m not around you.” He felt his cheeks burning and he furiously busied himself by checking over his Nyarf gun, clearing his throat.

“Same for me, Mabes.”

_Tell her._

Immediately he strangled that voice in his head; it had been bad enough when it nagged at him during her visit months ago. He didn’t need it now, especially not with their parents around. Not when there was a holiday he might potentially ruin in doing so.

“What’s with the scowl, bro-bro? Brain being jank again?” his sister asked. “Want me to shoot it ‘til it stops?”

Before he could say no, a Nyarf dart bounced off of his head.

“Ow, hey! Stop that, I’m fine!” he said dismissively. “That’s just my thinking face.”

“No, it’s your _‘I’m thinking about stuff that makes me hate myself’_ face. C’mon, Dip. What’s wrong?” She crawled over to where he lay stretched out and flopped across his midsection. “Is it the girl you won’t tell me about?”

Curse his terrible poker face, he couldn’t lie his way out of this. Especially not with his sister, the very girl in question, pressing her lithe body into his abdomen. He broke eye contact first, and he heard her gasp excitedly.

“ _It is!_ ” Her grin threatened to split her skull in two, and she leaned down, nestling her chin on his sternum. “Can’t you tell me anything about her? _Pleeease_?” She drug out the last word, adding a puppy-dog-eyed expression. He sighed, attempting to come up with a non-incriminating way to word a statement that would appease her. Chewing at his lower lip, he strained mentally. Obviously the gears in his head were grinding so hard she could hear it.

“Okay, I’ll make a deal with ya. I’m gonna ask one very non-specific question, and you can answer it. But!” He flinched at that, there was _always_ a ‘but’. “I get to ask you another question later, also non-specific. Just things that can help _me_ help _you_ win _her_ heart.”

Well, what would it hurt? “I guess I’ll be willing to exchange some very vague details in exchange for advice. However, I’m going to be impossibly vague, I don’t want you trying to sleuth your way into finding her social media pages or anything.”

She giggled and nodded. “Okie doke. So, question number one…” she said, face contorting into a thoughtful scrunch. “Is she creative?”

“Very,” he replied flatly, a happy grin crossing his face. Mabel just nodded, mentally cataloguing the information. She then leaned up and planted a noisy kiss on the very end of his nose.

“Muah! Thanks bro bro. I’m gonna go get a snack or something though, I’m running on empty here.” And, like that, she pranced out of the room, leaving him to his own thoughts.

He ran a hand over his stomach, where he could still feel the warmth of her body previously pressed to his. Then up to brush over the tip of his nose, which he was certain he felt tingling. A forlorn sigh weaseled its way out, turning into a groan of frustration as he tugged at his mop of hair. Why, why did his life have to be this hard?! It was bad enough that he had no idea how to talk to girls when he was interested in them. Why did one of them have to be his sister, too?

_Why is she the only one in so long?_

His own voice echoed that question about his skull. In the hollow pit of his stomach, he knew it was worse than he’d previously thought it to be. He wasn’t just in love with his sister. He was in deep. Mad deep. His fingers trailed from his hair down over his face, pulling at the skin as they passed over his features.

Was it normal for your soulmate to be your own sibling, your twin? One of the biggest no-nos there were when it came to love? Would anything in his life ever pass for normal? Would he ever manage to be normal, and, for that matter, would he want to be? Everything that told him that it was wrong to be in love with his sister had to shout over that nagging voice. The one that kept repeating itself like a broken record.

_Just. Tell. Her._

Okay, fine. He’d tell her. He’d go tell her right now! Dipper hopped to his feet, straightening out his shirt and marching out of the room, then down the stairs. He headed for the kitchen, hoping to catch her alone. Though, upon entering the room, realized he should have known better, as every other person in the house had somehow managed to converge into that one room.

His father was at the sink, coring apples with the drill and a paddle-bit, while Mabel, at the counter beside him, peeled them afterwards. Lastly, his mother was cutting them in half, then slicing them on a mandolin to create perfect, evenly thick pieces. Dipper stood awkwardly in the doorway until his rumbling stomach announced his presence for him.

“Back from the dead as promised, I see,” his mother teased. “Whatcha need, hon?”

He shrugged noncommittally, then asked “Do you need all of those apples?”

She shook her head, motioning at a few on the counter. “Help yourself. Just don’t eat an entire bushel again.”

Dipper groaned. “I did that _once_. And could barely move more than five feet from the bathroom for the next day and a half, so it won’t happen again. I don’t see why you have to bring this up every time I eat an apple,” he groused, biting into one noisily. She tutted at him.

“You act like I read you the riot act every time, dear. I’m just teasing.” She quickly changed the subject. “Your father and I were thinking about ordering in tonight for supper later. Chinese okay?” He nodded with a hum while he crunched at the bite of apple in his mouth.

When he looked back over to the table, he caught a glimpse of his sister staring his way, the apple she grasped half-peeled. She wasn’t even working on it, instead just gazing at him. Was that concern on her face? Why did she look so worried for him? It took Dipper a moment to  realize it was likely the apple story.

When he’d been sick during that episode of his life, she had stuck close by. When he spent more than five minutes in the bathroom, she would knock and ask if he was okay. Never once had she teased him over those two days, even when he’d had to ask her to bring him a fresh change of underwear and shorts the time he didn’t make it to the toilet before his innards had rebelled against him.

He cast a small grin at her, as if thanking her quietly for her efforts to comfort him back then. When she noticed he was looking right at her, she hastily returned to peeling the apple in her hand, cheeks getting pinker. That was odd. The noisy sound of the drill ripping through another apple shook Dipper out of his little world. Spinning around, he left the room and went back up the stairs to grab a book, which he soon lost himself in.

———

———

The sound of a broom handle knocking on the floor from below the guest room snapped Dipper from his trance, having been thoroughly engrossed in his book. He swung his legs off of the bed, slotting a strip of paper between the pages to keep his place. Halfway down the stairs, his nose was seduced by the aroma of General Tso’s chicken and Sesame Beef. Pork fried rice hit him next, and finally egg rolls. His stomach roared with furious and sudden hunger.

“Golden Wok, you magnificent, evil, palace of cuisine,” he mumbled as he sat down at the table. His father was laying food from the large paper bag onto the table while his mother gathered plates and glasses. Mabel came bouncing in from the other room and plopped down in the chair next to her brother. Dipper snapped up a set of chopsticks while she grabbed a fork, eyeballing the twin bamboo shafts he held in one hand.

In short order, they were all happily eating away at their chosen entrees. Dipper had his plate loaded with steamed rice, General Tso’s and an egg roll, while Mabel was attacking a healthy portion of Lo Mein. Their parents both satisfied their hunger with the sesame beef and fried rice. Frequently throughout the meal, Dipper noticed Mabel would watch him pluck food up with the chopsticks. Almost with envy. Actually, no, that was pretty clearly envy.

“What’s up, Mabes?” Hearing him say her name made her blink rapidly.

“I just… I never got the hang of eating with chopsticks like you did, and it seems so _cool_ ,” she grumbled. Dipper picked up another set and turned towards her..

“Here, I’ll try to teach you again. It’s not really that hard,” he said, pulling the pair of bamboo sticks from their paper sleeve. Without even so much as a second thought he pulled her hand closer, then tugged her fork away.

“Okay, so, you rest this chopstick in the crook of your thumb, right here,” he explained, “and use the tip of your middle finger to put pressure on it. This chopstick doesn’t move. Then you pinch the other between the tip of your thumb and index finger and hold it like a pencil.” He showed her how to move them with his own after she had a grip. She mimed the action, and her face lit up once she realized she had it down.

“Awww, look at them,” their mother piped up, snapping a picture with her phone before they could realize what was happening. “That one’s going straight up on Facebook, for the rest of the moms to leave embarrassing comments on!”

Dipper rolled his eyes, but Mabel stole the chance the distraction provided and tweaked his nose with her newfound chopstick skills. “Thanks, bro-bro. You’re the best.” He just gave her a dumbfounded grin in response, watching her slurp up her noodles with gusto as she snatched them up with her chopsticks.

The rest of the meal went by with relative silence, some small talk making the rounds but nothing that seemed particularly noteworthy to Dipper. He kept getting distracted by how Mabel would grab a bite of food with her chopsticks, and then happily grin to herself at how easily she had managed it. He’d brought her that happiness.

A wistful sigh escaped his nostrils as he crammed another bite of spicy, red-sauced chicken into his mouth. He followed that with a bite of his eggroll, hoping that the sound of the crunchy wrapper being pulverized to bits in his mouth would drown out his own inner monologue.

He wanted to bring her that kind of happiness every day. He wanted to be the one in her life teaching her, learning with her. He wanted most of all to share every other happy moment with her, and it dug at him so badly that he could never have it.

Or could he?

_Just tell her._

He shook the thought from his mind. He couldn’t do it. He’d rather wallow in self pity for the rest of his life, as long as that sacrifice meant his sister would be happy for the rest of hers.

———

———

Dipper rose from his restless slumber with a heavy, unhappy groan. After stuffing himself full of Chinese food the night prior, he’d returned to the guest room to lay in bed and read until he felt tired enough to pass out.

Dreams-or rather nightmares-had come quickly, and seemed to spook him awake every other hour. He didn’t remember most of them, but he did remember how they made him feel; alone, isolated, unwanted. Feelings that had, at times in his life, plagued him beyond his sleep. He remembered how every time Mabel had found a new boyfriend, those sensations of being cast aside began to settle in the back of his mind.

He rubbed a hand over his pounding forehead. Yuck, what a fantastic way to start Thanksgiving; a migraine. He blindly stumbled from the bed to the upstairs restroom, quietly shouldering the door open. A small squeak of surprise caused him to squint through one eye, and was met with the vision of his sister, topless, holding a shirt over her naked torso, donning the expression of a cornered rabbit. He quickly spun his back to her.

“Oh crud, sorry Mabes. I didn’t even knock, or anything,” he grumbled in his half awake, head-throbbing stupor. A flutter of cloth and a small raspberry being blown at him made him glance back; she had the shirt on now. That same one she’d worn as a nightshirt when she’d stayed with him a few months back. His heart pounded twice as hard as his head did. Seeing her in his own clothing twisted his gut uncomfortably. “S-sorry. Can I snag a couple of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet? I’ll leave the bathroom to you then.”

Without saying anything, she pulled the mirrored door open and grabbed a bottle, twisted it open, and laid out two pills. Then she filled a paper cup with water from the tap and offered both pills and cup to her brother. He stared, dumbfounded, through the eye he held open.

“You look like you have a splitting headache and wanna hurl, Dippin’ Dot. When I get like that trying to get myself painkillers and water seems worse than the boulder deal that… uh, which guy had to roll the boulder up the hill again?”

“Sisyphus,” Dipper mumbled, gladly accepting the pills and water, tossing each back in turn with a gulp. “I’m kinda shocked, and glad, that you remember that much. I figured you had always ignored me when I talked about old mythology and stuff.”

“Whaaat, Dipper, bruh, please. I remember everything you tell me!” He stared incredulously, with just the one eye. She crossed her arms defiantly. “Okay _most_ of it. There’s not a whole lotta room in my noggin for new facts to keep gettin’ crammed in there.”

“Mabel, you’re smarter than you or anyone else knows. I’m pretty sure if you applied yourself a little bit that you’d even be smarter than me, not that it would take much effort.” He sat down on the lid of the toilet with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been acting like a moron recently.”

“Is this about the mystery girl?” she asked cautiously. He refused to look at her. “Thought so. Okay then, question two: is she smart like you?” He swiveled his gaze up to hers. She still had her arms crossed, and tapped a foot impatiently on the linoleum floor. He whined in minor frustration. “Dipper, we made a deal.”

“Smarter,” he murmured, moving to stand back up. _Smarter than she’d ever let herself believe_. “Much smarter, I wager.” Mabel helped him up to his feet and gave him a gentle smooch on the temple, right where it throbbed the hardest. Once her lips left his skin, he felt somehow as though the inside of his head had cooled down, the pain easing.

“Okay then, you go get dressed and junk. Dad’s gonna need your help getting the bird in the fryer without setting the lawn ablaze,” she joked, just as their father walked by. He promptly spoke up in self defense.

“Hey, now, I only did that once and we had an extinguisher on standby,” he argued. “Plus the neighbors barely had time to try to call the fire department.” He nodded with a ‘so there’ attitude, then gave Dipper a tap on the shoulder. “But no, she’s right. Get dressed and help me set up for the turkey’s inaugural oil hot tub session.”

Dipper just grunted in acknowledgement, shuffling through the doorway. He turned and gave his sister a short, thankful smile. She smiled back, then shooed him from the entryway to close the door.

Once he’d changed, he went out into the backyard where his father was setting up the fryer. It was a large burner, hooked to a propane tank. A large kettle sat on the burner, filled just to the halfway mark with oil. The bucket containing the brining bird sat next to the picnic table, where a rack with a sheet pan under it sat waiting.

“First things first, we have to get Gobbles out of his soak and dried off,” his dad explained. They popped the lid off of the bucket and immediately the smell of the now aged brine hit Dipper’s nose. His stomach groaned with an almost lustful growl. How did anything ever have the right to smell so damned good?

Each of the Pines gentlemen grabbed a leg and hauled the turkey out of the brine and onto the waiting rack, where liquid started to dribble out onto the sheet pan below. His father quickly tossed him a roll of paper towels. Dipper unrolled a section of them, wadding them into a bundle and blotting the turkey all over. Getting the excess liquid off the bird was a safety measure; oil and water didn’t mix, and hot oil would furiously boil any water on the surface of the bird. After getting the outside, he used a new wad of towels to blot the inner cavity dry as well.

“Okay then! Bird’s dry, now he just has to sit and rest while the oil heats up,” his father said, marching towards the back door of the garage. He emerged some minutes later with a stepladder, a metal bar, and a pulley that held a metal hook on a length of plastic coated wire, which hooked to a hand powered winch. Mister Pines then set it up so the ladder straddled the fryer, the bar crossing through rungs on both sides. From the bar he hung the pulley, so that the winch could raise or lower the hook’s position.

As they waited for the oil to heat up, Dipper and his father made small talk. His dad asked about school and what it was like living away from home, and Dipper managed to weasel information on the technology his father’s job had him currently working on. After twenty minutes or so, his father plucked a previously unseen potato off of the table, and used his pocketknife to slice a chunk off. He dropped it into the rippling oil, which furiously roiled around the piece of root vegetable.

“Perfect! Let’s get the bird in the basket and lower him to his doom.” Dipper rolled his eyes at his dad, but helped load the turkey. Together, by hand, they slowly lowered it into the hot oil where it began to bubble and snap violently, but did not boil over. His father grabbed the kettle’s lid, slapped it on, and clapped his hands once. “And that’s that! Let’s see what kind of goodies we can snatch from the kitchen early.”

They both made their way to the kitchen, finding the smell of several dishes all going at once; pies, cookies, all of various flavors. Vegetable dishes being prepared on the stovetop, and several cold dishes off to the side such as gelatin molds and a fruit salad. It was a lot of food. Too much food.

“We expecting company for dinner?” Dipper wondered aloud. His mom looked up from her spot at the stove, where she was stirring a sauce-pot’s contents.

“No, but you and your sister are taking off after a couple of days, so you can take leftovers back with you. You won’t have to spend money on food for a week,” she suggested, winking at him. He rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help but smile. There was an appeal to having food from home to tide him over when he returned to school.

In the next instant, his sister’s maniacal laughter followed by the loud FWOOSH of flame spooked him out of his daydream. He spun around to spy her at the counter, a tray of orange cookies with dollops of marshmallow fluff adorning each laid before her. Using the brazing torch she held in her hand, she carefully roasted each pile of white gooey fluff to a caramel brown, until each of the two dozen cookies was properly browned. The smell of roasting marshmallow made his stomach rumble like Vesuvius.

“What on earth are those?” Dipper asked, leaning in over her shoulder. She twisted the fire off and set the torch down, then snatched up one of the cookies and held it in front of his face. He opened his mouth expectantly, and sure enough she popped it against his lips. Biting down, the flavor of marshmallow mingled with a chewy texture, and a pumpkin-y flavor with spices like cinnamon and cloves and brown sugar all at once.

“Pumpkin snickerdoodles with an extra touch of roasted marshmallow fluff, a la Mabel,” she proclaimed triumphantly. He hummed against the mouthful, quickly replacing it with the rest of the cookie after he swallowed. He chewed happily at that bit for an eternity before he finally gulped it down as well. “Whatcha think, Bro-sauce?”

“These are truly awful, let’s say I just dispose of the rest of these?” he teased, reaching for a second one. She smacked his hand away lightly.

“Not so fast, partner! You can’t fool me with that whole _‘I’ll spare you the terror of eating these’_ bizz,” she chided, and he let out a long, sarcastic groan.

“Buuut Maaabeeelll.”

“Buuut Diiipperrr,” she said with a mocking tone to her voice. They both burst into fits of giggles. “But no, really glad you like them so much bro-bro. I’ll have to send some your way before the holidays roll around. You gotta do the marshmallow and blowtorch part yourself, though.”

“Worth it,” he said, moving to investigate the dish holding his mother’s attention for the moment. She appeared to be mixing gravy together, waiting for it to thicken over the low heat. Well darn, he couldn’t exactly sneak a taste of gravy. So he did the next best thing and planted a smooch on her cheek while giving her a one-arm-around-the-shoulders hug. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Nope, you’d be a walking, eating disaster if I let you touch anything right now. I know this game, you pretend to be helping and eat one of everything. Get out of the kitchen, and let me and your sister work,” she teased, bumping the side of her hips to his own to scoot him away. He clutched a hand to his chest.

“You cut me to the quick, Madame! I only wanted to assist you in the creation of this bounteous feast you have created… and maybe eat like, three rolls, tops.” She snorted and waved him off, while his dad swiped a pair of rolls during the distraction. He quickly hooked a thumb back towards the back door and Dipper merely nodded. Once they were outside, his dad tossed him one of the rolls.

Warm, soft, buttery dough yielded to his teeth like bread made of cloud vapor. Oh, that was wonderful, he could probably eat a dozen of these by himself. He was certainly going to try, along with all of those snickerdoodles, maybe three more hand-turkey cookies, and a quarter of the bird he and his father had in the deep fryer. Any other time of year he’d eat in moderation, but by the multiverse and powers of Time Baby, he would eat like a glutton on Thanksgiving.

———

———

 _Powers that be, bless the inventor of the turkey fryer_ , Dipper thought as he stared down the gauntlet of a meal laid out on the table. Deep fried turkey with golden, crackling skin, mashed potatoes, gravy, pies, cookies, corn on the cob, rolls, stuffing, and that was everything that could fit on the table. The counter served as a makeshift buffet, lined with jello molds, more cookies, green bean casserole. Smaller dishes that he didn’t recognize just yet also filled in spaces left by the others. Not one inch of countertop escaped utilization.

Their father led a short, simple, but heartfelt prayer of thanks. Even Dipper, the nonbeliever he was, respectfully bowed his head for the touch of ceremony. Given the things he had seen in Gravity Falls, he wasn’t going to discount what anybody else happened to believe. After the prayer was finished, everybody made a point of loading up their plates as full as possible.

The meal seemed to go for hours; once anyone felt full, they would sit and socialize, and then return to grazing. As opposed to there being separate lunch or supper meals, the latter half of the day drug out into one enormous blur of dining.

Over the course of those few hours, the family seemed to migrate between rooms, constantly changing from the living room to the kitchen and back again. At one point there was a euker game going around the coffee table, which had twins pitted against parents. Mabel, against Dipper’s personal judgement, went it alone on one turn and won them the game by sweeping with a perfect hand of both Jacks, King, Queen and an Ace. Later, during a game of Clue, Dipper managed to solve the case based purely on everybody else’s incorrect guesses about whodunnit.

Eventually they were all clustered around the television watching British comedy shows from years long past. Dipper and Mabel were sitting side by side on the couch, and at some point during the marathon of absurd comedy skits, their parents had retreated back to the kitchen for another round of food. Dipper himself was laughing as the man on screen whipped his car with a branch from a tree, cursing at it irately. It was when Mabel clung around his arm and snuggled up to him that he felt his breath hitch.

“Can it just be today forever?” Mabel mumbled into his shoulder. He twisted around to look down at her. The smile on her face didn’t manage to reach her eyes. He brought his hand up and ruffled her hair playfully.

“What, you wouldn’t rather move on and find somebody worth spending the rest of your life with?” he teased. She shook her head, glancing up at him.

“I think I’d be perfectly happy if I got to spend the rest of my life with my bro-bro by my side.” He felt his mouth dry out so fast that the Sahara seemed sopping by comparison. He stared in slight disbelief. She couldn’t possibly mean that the way he hoped she did. She must just be missing the days when they were inseparable. Surely, that just _HAD_ to be the case.

“Mabel…?” She tilted her head up to meet his gaze.

“Yeah, Dip?”

_Just tell her._

“I…” He licked his lips, and tried to force himself to speak. His throat felt so dry. The sound of their parents laughing as they came back into the room caused his fight-or-flight response to choose flight. “I think I’m gonna go to bed a little early. Kinda feeling the food coma, sorry…”

“Oh, no, sure bro. Go rest. You’ll have one helluva food baby to birth later if the way you ate is any indicator,” Mabel teased. He gave her a playful shove as she sat up and within the minute he was up in the guest room, laying on the bed.

———

———

And, for the last couple of hours, that was where he stayed, listening to the same playlist, looping over and over. It wasn’t helping at all, nothing helped. The only thing he could think of was the way his sister had looked up at him, waiting, expecting him to say something while she clung to him. The way she had kissed his forehead, and then his nose the day before that. The rib-crushing, body-shaking hug she had pounced on him with.

 _Great, Dipper. You’re going to college a ways from home, at a school flowing with available women. Any one of them that you could make a fresh start with, and impress, and possibly develop a relationship. And what do you do? You decide to fall for your own_ sister. _It’s official, I’m hopeless. I’m going to die alone with no genetic legacy to my name._

He rolled over and buried his face in a pillow before screaming into it, the effect muffled incredibly well. He then pounded his fist into it a couple of times in frustration, his chest heaving as a sob wormed its way free. No, he was NOT going to let himself cry. No, no. Stop, tears. Stop, intrusive thoughts. Why couldn’t he just stop thinking and turn his brain off so he could fall asleep, like he’d claimed he was going to? Fuck this whole situation.

A knock at his door snapped him out of his mild, self-loathing trance. “Y-yeah?” He sputtered, trying to regain his composure as he rolled to sit up against the headboard, tugging his earbuds loose..

“Dip, can I come in?” Ah, wonderful. Now the one person he was avoiding to try and dodge awkward embarrassment with had come to unknowingly torment him further.

 _Fuck, don’t think of her like that Dipper. Don’t let yourself resent the biggest light in your life because of your own fucked up feelings._ He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes to try and hide that he’d been crying just moments before.

“Yeah, sure Mabes. It’s unlocked,” he announced. She quietly pulled the door open a crack and stepped around it, closing it behind herself softly. Why was she sneaking around? “What’s up?”

“Mom and Dad got into the wine and are snoring on the couch, right now. I got lonely and figured I’d come spend a bit of time with you, if that’s okay?” She walked cautiously over to the bed, as though she were walking on eggshells. He just nodded and patted the space next to himself on the mattress.

“You don’t even have to ask, you know that,” he commented. She shrugged as she sat down and leaned against the headboard.

“I dunno, it just seems like things have been a little… off, between us, these last few days. One moment we’re laughing and goofing off just like we always have and then you seem to pull back and lock yourself up in your dumb, self-hating thoughts over some girl.” She pulled a lock of hair into her grasp and twisted it nervously around her fingers. “And I feel like I haven’t exactly been helpful or anything yet. I just keep asking you stuff, and I haven’t given you any answers back yet.”

“Hey, you don’t have anything to apologize for. I promise my stupidity is nobody’s fault but my own, Mabes. I don’t expect you to work any miracles and make me find out how to make this girl fall for me. She’s too good for me, anyhow.” She slugged him on the shoulder, and hard this time. Ouch, that would bruise. “What was that for?”

“No girl is too good for my brother. You helped save the world from being torn apart by who knows what kind of weird poop,” she explained, frowning at him. “Any girl would be lucky to have you. I might…” she hesitated, and he felt his body tremble nervously. “I might even be a little jealous of them, getting to have a guy like that.”

_Just tell her!_

“Mabel, I assure you, you’ll find a guy who will know how to put up with your goofball ways and jokes, who will appreciate every little thing you do for him and want to keep you forever. I envy the bastard that manages to get the love and admiration of my sister.” She smiled sadly at him, wiping her nose on her sleeve with a sniffle. “What do you say we just listen to some music together? Talking about our problems just makes us both seem angry with ourselves.”

She nodded and picked up one of his earbuds, sticking it into her left ear while he pushed the other into his right ear. He pulled up his playlist on his phone, scrolling through until he found the right song. He hit play, tugging his sister into a one-armed hug.

_Your eyes, your eyes they tell me everything_   
_The first, the last and in between, that’s everything_   
_Your kiss, your kiss so wet I lose my breath_   
_Makes me forget the old regrets, it’s everything._

Mabel sighed into his neck, nuzzling closer as she listened to the music, and Dipper planted a soft kiss against the top of her head. She smelled like cinnamon and apples.

_You’re not just a girl_   
_You’re more like the air and sea_   
_I want you so desperately_   
_And nothing’s gonna keep us apart._

They sat in silence, listening to the song, Dipper hoping that in some small way, this song was doing the confessing for him. Every time he thought to tell her, it seemed like his brain and mouth no longer communicated.

_Your voice, it’s whispering against my neck_   
_Your lips erase the old regrets of anything_   
_Your mind, it makes me want to know you more_   
_So tell me what we have in store, tell me everything_

_You’re not just a girl_   
_You’re more like the air and sea_   
_I want you so desperately_   
_And nothing’s gonna keep us apart._

His sister was humming along with the music now, her eyes closed peacefully as she listened. When the next verse began, her eyes fluttered open, brow furrowed as Dipper chewed on his tongue to keep his mouth shut.

_And if you’ll be mine_   
_I’ll never do you any harm_   
_I’ll give you the Moon and Stars_   
_And nothing’s gonna keep us apart._

She tilted her head up and looked her brother right in the eyes for the remainder of the song, and he mentally raced to decipher the look she was giving him. Confusion, understanding, yearning, fright, they all intermingled behind her eyes. She chewed on her lower lip and sat quietly, breaking the stare for the last verse.

_You can say anything_   
_And you can say anything_   
_And you can say anything to me._

As the last verse repeated itself, she reached out, palm up, towards his phone.

“What?”

“Gimme, I need to find a song I need you to hear.” His face scrunched in confusion, but he caved in and placed his phone in her grasp. She instantly opened the youtube app and began searching. After a minute she had found what she wanted, apparently, and set the phone, face down, against his stomach.

A cheerful sounding tune started up, and she nestled her head in the crook of his neck again.

 _You seem quite nice for a girl with good looks_  
_And I’m the kinda fellow that’ll make you feel better when your life gets shook_  
 _So give it a chance according to your plans_  
 _I bet I’m not number one on your list to kiss, but please understand…_

He felt his heart begin to race; had she figured him out? Was this a good song or a bad song? Nervous tension swiftly began to build up in his gut, fear of the next verse making it worse. Then a girl’s voice piped up to accompany the man who had just sang.

_You seem quite shy, but you’re oh so cute_   
_And I’m the kind of girl that would love to be yours if you’d ask me to_   
_So just take a chance, try to hold my hand_   
_I swear I’d never let go_   
_Just let me know if you’d be my man._

Mabel tilted her head up and locked her eyes on his. Lips drawn into a tight, fearful expression, she placed her hand, palm up, against his thigh. His own hand crept over towards hers, then hesitated, hovering with a tremble. She flexed her fingers, the worry in her eyes growing. Was she… offering what he thought she was?

He clasped his hand around hers and she squeezed so tight he almost saw stars, but he didn’t mind at all. All he cared about was how soft and safe her grip felt.

 _I really want to come out and tell you_  
_Oh darling, I love you so_  
 _If you’d ask me for my heart, there’s no way that I’ll say no_  
 _Oh darling, just take a chance please_  
 _So we can stay together till hell starts to freeze._

Mabel’s tongue slid over her lips, which were trembling with hesitation. He felt himself mirror the action, the roughness of his chapped lips suddenly very apparent in the back of his mind. Hers looked so soft in comparison. He desperately wanted to find out if they were.

 _You seem quite right for a boy like me_  
_And I wanna know would you treat me well_  
 _Would you treat me like a queen_  
 _Cause I’d like to show you and make you see_  
 _That although we’re different types_  
 _We were meant to be._

He swallowed nervously. Her eyes were on him, on his lips, her teeth digging into her own lower lip. He fought the urge to squirm away from her. This moment felt too unreal, too much like a dream to believe any of it was happening.

 _I really want to come out and tell you_  
_Oh darling, I love you so_  
 _If you’d ask me for my heart, there’s no way that I’ll say no_  
 _Oh darling, just take a chance please_  
 _So we can stay together till hell starts to freeze._

“M-Mabel?” Her hand squeezed around his reassuringly.

 _So I gotta ask you,_  
_I can’t be afraid_  
 _I gotta take a chance at love_  
 _So what do you say._

“I have one last question about mystery girl, Dip.” His leg bounced in place as he just nodded in acknowledgement. “And, it’s not as vague as my last two…” He felt the color in his face drain.

 _Oh darling, I love you so_  
_If you’d ask me for my heart, there’s no way that I’ll say no_  
 _Oh darling, just take a chance please_  
 _So we can stay together till hell starts to freeze._

“What… what is it, sis?” He could see the way she hesitated, the way her cheeks got pinker than they usually did. She sat up a little higher, leaning in and placing her forehead to his. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. He was lost in those deep, brown gateways to her soul.

 _Oh darling, I love you so_  
_If you’d ask me for my heart, there’s no way that I’ll say no_  
 _Oh darling, just take a chance please_  
 _So we can stay together till hell starts to freeze._

“Is… is she in the room right now?” Her voice shook, tears welling up in her eyes. The question had barely been more than a whisper. Dipper couldn’t take it anymore.

_**Just tell her!** _

He opened his mouth to speak, and only a croaking sound emerged. He swallowed to wet his throat, an effort in futility it turned out. Her eyes were searching his, begging for an answer. He answered the only way he could muster.

He kissed her.

As far as he was concerned, that moment, that brief instant in his life could have lasted an eternity. The second their lips met, a weight seemed to release itself from his shoulders. His heart beat heavy, but no longer seemed as panicked. Electricity seemed to flow from one pair of lips to the other, and back again. Every feeling of dread and hesitation that he had endured for the last few months evaporated.

They both pulled away at the same time, and he finally remembered to breathe. Dipper lifted his free hand to brush over her cheek, thumb wiping away a stray tear. Her forehead remained firmly pressed to his, eyes closed gently, the corners of her mouth lifting into a tiny, nervous smile.

“Is that a yes?” The whispered question caught him off guard, and he chuckled briefly, bumping his nose to hers.

“I could always repeat my answer if my first attempt wasn’t clear?” This time she giggled, then nuzzled into the hand cupping her cheek, eyes still blissfully pressed shut.

“How do I know when I open my eyes this dream won’t be over?” More tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. He let go of her hand, only so he could pull her into a tight hug.

“If this is your dream, I hope you never wake up, because we’re dreaming together,” he muttered into her hair. Her body shook as a small sob escaped her. “Hey, Mabes, it’s okay. I promise. It’s not a dream, at least I really, really hope it isn’t.”

Mabel sat back, wiping her tears away before she opened her eyes, mouth curling up at one side. Her eyes still held a skeptical-but-also-hopeful look to them. With a warm grin, he gave her side a brief, harmless tweak.

“Ow! Hey, don’t pinch me!” she laughed, swatting the offending hand away from her side. “What was that for?”

“Well, you can’t be dreaming,” he explained, “so it’s either me, or we’re awake and my dream’s come true.” Her expression turned to confusion, then realization, eyes going wider than he could remember them being in a long, long time.

“Y-you mean…?”

“Yep.”

“Both of us?”

“Apparently.” Mabel laughed, and Dipper joined her. It was one of the few moments of true, stress free happiness he had felt in a long, long time. So he did what he had struggled to do, for three of the longest months in his life.

He told her.

“I’m in love with you, Mabel Pines. More than I had ever thought possible.” The smile she beamed at him made his chest feel warmer than he’d ever imagined it could.

“I’m in love with you, too, Dipper Pines. I hope this waking dream never ends.”

They sealed their confessions with what they would later look back on as their first kiss as a couple.


End file.
